


All about Evil

by BehindBrokenWindows



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, POV Outsider, partly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 03:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30099348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BehindBrokenWindows/pseuds/BehindBrokenWindows
Summary: Crowley is a disaster who runs away the moment things become real. He gets exactly what he deserves. Luckily angels are forgiving.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 33





	All about Evil

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into the Good Omens fandom, feedback is precious as always!

“Your arse is the size of the moon in those pants, you know,” Crowley drawls sulkily, then redoubles his efforts to find solace in a glass of wine. Mary doesn’t know what he’s trying to find solace for, exactly, but she recognises the signs of a great sulk.

“And yet it’s nowhere near the size of your inflated ego. Here –” She walks her huge arse over and refills his glass. “Were you caught speeding again?” she asks, trying to nudge the piece of spineless non-binary inconvenience on her sofa closer to telling her what the problem is.

“Speeding off the rail tracks of normality into an excited bubbling mess of recently-but-possibly-no-longer angelic acceptance.”

“Oh dear,” Mary mutters, and refills her own glass of wine almost to the brim, emptying the bottle completely. She’ll need it to get through this evening, that much is already clear. She also needs to catch up to the slob on the sofa who’d decided to start several hours before even arriving on the continent. “Does this have anything to do with that man you were talking about a couple of years ago, the gardener?”

“The angel, yeah.”

“So, he’s finally accepted that you’re destined for each other, then?”

“Ugh!” The exclamation is followed by a number of similar noises that are decidedly harder to put into letters, before Crowley reacquaints his face with her pillow.

“That’s where Tabby likes to sit and clean his balls,” Mary informs him, hiding her grin with her wine glass as he throws himself off the sofa rather spectacularly, arms and legs everywhere like a spooked cat.

“Why am I here anyway,” Crowley mutters as he sits up, glowering at her through his dark glasses. “You’re awful. Bloody awful, always make me feel worse. You – yes, _you_ Mary Banasiewicz, are definitely going to hell.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage,” she chatters happily, itching her second chin.

“Oh, I mean it. You’ll probably get your own amusement park of horror, especially designed. I’ll make sure to tell someone to add a stop with incredibly interesting fanfiction written with zero respect for grammar. What was it you did when your neighbour forgot to take down his Christmas lights that year?”

“Gave him electric shock. Very easy when you know your wires and the front lawn is full of convenient puddles.”

“And that wasn’t even _my_ fault, I didn’t even _tempt_ – you’re pure evil, and so’s your cat!”

“I thought all authors were evil. I’m sure I’ll get to meet Hemingway in hell. I can’t wait.”

“Authors and cat-owners,” Crowley mutters, stumbling to his feet.

“There’s a significant overlap, my dear girl.” Crowley only grumbles some more and refills his glass of wine. Mary is sure that bottle was empty, and she is about to say as much, but the thought doesn’t quite settle, and she forgets. “Tell me about this gardener then. He can’t be that bad, even if he is a man.”

“Not a gardener. Owns a bookshop. Stuffy old – whatever. I mean, it’s the same, the same guy, he just.”

“Career change? Bold of a man his age in this economy.”

“He’s not old!” And, okay, Mary might have said that simply to see _that_ particularly affronted look on Crowley’s face. “Well, I mean, he’s old, but not _like that_ old.” Whatever that was supposed to mean.

“Come here, Crow,” Mary mutters and makes grabby-hands at him until he gives up the pretence and falls face first into her massive thighs. She sips her wine with one hand and pats her poor little gay disaster with the other, threading thick fingers through his hair just to hear him purr pleasantly. “Tell me, what’s really ruffled your feathers like this, hm?”

“Asked me to move in with him.” Mary stops the coddling, and debates for a moment whether she should pour her remaining wine on his head. “Was just soaking up some sunlight after averting the apocalypse and going to Heaven in his body and the bastard – bastard just up and _might as well, Crowley, it would be much more practical if you just kept your plants here. You only leave the shop to water them anyway_.” Mary wonders for a second whether that is really how mysterious Mr Gardener/shop owner sounds, but decides she’d rather not know.

“ _Crowley_ ,” she says, trying to put as much annoyance in her voice as humanly possible. “You useless piece of shit.”

“Oy!” She grabs the back of Crowley’s head and pushes his face back against her thighs to muffle his indignant nonsense.

“You’ve been pining over this man for _literal_ years, and the moment he realises that he loves you too _you leave him_. You _undeserving, pitiful excuse of a queer._ ” Crowley rips himself away from her and crosses the room like he’s going to leave, but Mary knows he won’t do it. “Can you imagine what he’s thinking right now? Did you even explain anything before you up and _left for America?_ _That’s_ evil, Crowley.”

“No!” Crowley sneers. “I mean yes! Yes, that _is_ evil, and I’m evil, and he’ll never understand!”

“Oh no, poor Crowley baby, not like the other kids, will _never_ be understood. You sound like an angsty teenager, and it’s very un-sexy on a person in their late forties.”

“Fuck you, what do you know. I _am_ not like the other kidsss!”

“Get over yourself. This man has known you for a decade, he _knows_ you. You’re just running away because you’re scared and you have commitment issues.”

“He thinks I’m nice,” Crowley sneers. He’s gotten properly worked up by now, and Mary thinks it might have been better to do this in the garden, with less immediate threat to her new-old writing desk. She painted it herself.

“You _are_ nice.”

Crowley outright snarls. “I _enjoy_ my work. I enjoy it, it’s _fun_. I’m not going to ssstop just because we’re _our side_ now. What – what … oh fuck.” Crowley, shaking, collapses back on top of her. “I’ve bollocksed it all up, haven’t I? He probably thinks I was _tempting_ him or something. And now it’s too late.”

“My God, you’re dramatic,” Mary complains, pretending that she isn’t highly amused. “First you fuck it up on purpose, then you dare moan about the fact that it goes to hell. I refuse to listen to your self-pitying shit, Crowley. Get your act together, go back to London, and get on your bony knees to apologise.”

“He won’t have me.”

“You’re a terrible liar. Not even _you_ believe that. Don’t worry, I can tell. Now, tell me all about him,” she says, lighting a joint.

*

He hadn’t _meant_ to disappear, it was just that he suddenly found himself on a plane to Colorado without so much as a _smell you later_.

 _Heaven_ Crowley hopes he’ll smell him later.

He’d been ready to spontaneously combust by the time the plane landed – a good two hours before schedule – and not even making the airport bomb-alarm go off had made him feel better.

The apocalypse had been averted, heaven and hell had withdrawn, Aziraphale was safe, and Crowley had gotten everything he’d ever dreamed off, and it had all hit him like a truck in the face.

He gets exactly what he deserves when he goes to Mary, and that’s exactly why he’d gone there, even though he knew he was going to regret it. She’s always been straightforward and never minced her words. Not that he’d ever let her know he likes that about her, but she probably knows anyway. Clever humans.

He doesn’t mean to stay three days, but they have a lot to catch up on, considering they haven’t seen each other since she moved here, four years ago. She tries to throw him out several times, and he finally manages to gather his courage and a tiny speck of optimism. It only lasts until he gets in the plane, but at that point it’ll take a miracle to get out of there, and quite frankly Mary will kick him in his non-existent balls if he shows up again so soon.

So he gets back to London and keeps the speed limit all the way from the airport to the bookshop, a miracle in and of itself, or simply cowardice. Crowley doesn’t dwell on it, he tries not to dwell on anything, except wishing that he were gloriously drunk again. The most advantageous thing about being a supernatural entity was the ability to remain perfectly drunk for three days straight if you liked. That was what he’d done, and his fingers are now shaking.

A gust of wind opens the door to the bookshop as Crowley saunters over, all criminally long steps and no real confidence, like. He’s never really felt _nervous_ before, not like this. Not even asking for Holy Water, he’d thought Aziraphale would understand.

“Excuse me, but we are closed today! Quite closed! Can’t you see the sign?” That is definitely Aziraphale, shouting from the backroom. Crowley hadn’t seen the sign. Hadn’t even realised that the door was locked. If he were only a bit braver he’d tell Aziraphale not to worry, that it was just him, back from a vacation. It would have worked in the old days. Back before this thing between them had been all feeling, no words. Back when there had been a delicious amount of _plausible deniability_ , _pining_ and most importantly _no one ever admitting to anything_.

Crowley locks the door behind himself and slinks into the backroom, finding Aziraphale with a cup of cold tea and a closed book in his lap. His favourite blanket is falling off his shoulders and the room feels cold.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley says, because he is and because Aziraphale should know. “I shouldn’t’a left like that. Got carried away. Don’t know what – why I.”

“It’s alright, not to worry my dear. Everything is tip top.” If Crowley still had access to Hell, his heart would be halfway down there already. He’s never heard Aziraphale talk to him so coldly, not even giving him a glance.

“I’d… I’d love to move in. And everything. All that, human nonsense. Everything they do. I’d love to, I just. I was scared.” His voice trickles into nothing at the end and he feels a strange, nauseating feeling that he’s never felt before.

“You left.”

“I came back.”

“For three days. Without saying goodbye, or leaving a note, or picking up your awful poke-screen telephone. I was _worried,_ Crowley. What if they’d come back for you, what if – what if I weren’t there when you needed me?”

Crowley doesn’t know what else to do, so he sinks to his knees in front of Aziraphale’s feet, planted primly on the floor, and his mind is only very temporary diverted by wondering if Mary had meant that he should suck him off, or just scrape at his feet for forgiveness.

“I was afraid,” Crowley says, voice shaking with utter dread, “that, that you didn’t know what you were getting into. With me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Aziraphale scoffs, fingers toying nervously with the edge of the blanket.

“I’m not going to start keeping the speed limit, angel. Or stop wiling when I want to, I’m a bloody demon, it’s fun. I’ll still… make the internet in central London so slow you can only watch a movie in 240p on Friday evenings and make everyone’s day worse. I won’t stop, I’m not _good_ , even if I helped stop the apocalypse and won’t kill kids.”

“I know that. I _know_ , Crowley. And if you think that is why I haven’t… haven’t showed my affection for you these last two hundred years, then you’re stupider than you look. I might not… like all your stunts, but I like _you_. More than Heaven, more than this bookshop.” Crowley looks up at that, mouth open a bit in surprise. Aziraphale manages a little smile. “If I had to choose between the shop and you, I’d chose you.”

“With all the books in it?” Aziraphale thinks about that like he hadn’t considered, then sighs in regret.

“Even with all the books in it.”

“And if I make a highway that spells _Fuck You Gabe_ –”

“Even then. Actually, especially then. Exactly then.”

“Oh.” Crowley seems to think about that for a moment. “Just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing,” he mutters. “I always forget how much of a bastard you can be, because you always pretend to be so bloody innocent. Like I haven’t seen you shake an autograph out of a very perplexed Olaudah Equiano.”

“I don’t pretend when it’s just me and you around, Crowley,” Aziraphale mutters with a slight smile, and Crowley almost believes him.

“That’s rubbish, absolute rubbish angel, you lie and pretend all the time, like you don’t judge the Great Plan, and that you trust the Almighty and that Heaven is Pure Goodness. You lying, conniving… manipulating little angel you are.”

“I’m not conniving or manipulating! I might have not been entirely truthful all the time, but I’ve only ever lied for self-preservation! You know what they would have done to us, and it was always more important to me – well, not always, but for a very long time it has been – to keep you safe from Hell than to keep myself safe from Heaven. You _know_ that Crowley.”

Crowley mutters something and gets up, miracles a fire in the fireplace so he can brood more aesthetically.

“You really want to do this, then? You and me? With all my – my demonly wiles. Just you and me against the rest of the world, huh?”

“That’s not it at all, Crowley. It’s you, and me, and the rest of the world, against Heaven and Hell. If you weren’t so determined to muck things up for yourself because you think it can’t possibly last, you would know that. I’ll have you know we’ve already managed 6000 years. Why not 6000 more?”

“Anything you want, angel,” Crowley mutters, and manages a bit of a smirk on his face. “I’ll make it worth your while.” He winks.

“You do that without even trying, my dear,” Aziraphale tells him, ruining everything by making him blush.

*

“Who is this American friend of yours anyway?” Aziraphale asks later, when they’ve both agreed to be better at communication and the heat of the fire is making the snake in human form lazy.

“Not American, she just lives there. Met her when we were looking after Warlock.”

“And why have I never heard of her?” Crowley’s answer is muffled against Aziraphale’s waistcoat, so he can’t hear. “What was that?”

“Cuz I was mostly moaning about _you_ ,” Crowley admits grumpily, burrowing deeper into his living pillow.

“Oh.” Aziraphale’s hands stop caressing Crowley’s neck for a moment because he is flustered and hadn’t really imagined Crowley actually _talking of him_ to humans. He continues the caresses when Crowley hisses indignantly. “And who is she?”

“Some author or other, you wouldn’t know her. Name’s Mary Banasiewicz.”

“You’re friends with _The Mary Banasiewicz?!_ ”

Crowley swears to this day that his hearing has never been the same. But it was all worth it none the less.


End file.
